Couple caught on camera by photojournalist during riot following Canucks’ loss in Stanley Cup decider Lying in the street and seemingly locked in a kiss as chaos erupts around them, a young couple appear oblivious to the charging crowds and baton-wielding riot police. The photograph, taken amid Vancouver’s hockey riots, has been tweeted around the world. But the photographer who took it is still not sure what the picture really shows. Canada-based photojournalist Richard Lam took the photograph while covering the riots that followed the Vancouver Canucks’ 4-0 loss to the Boston Bruins in the Stanley Cup. The photographer was being buffeted by rioters and riot police when he spotted the couple. “I was about 20 or 30 yards away,” he said. “There were these two people on the ground in this empty street. Initially I thought one of them was hurt.” He took a few shots and then the moment was lost. “It was complete chaos. Rioters set two cars on fire and then I saw looters break the window at a neighbouring department store,” he said. “At that point, the riot police charged right towards us. After I stopped running, I noticed in the space behind the line of police that two people were lying in the street with the riot police and a raging fire just beyond them. “I knew I had captured a ‘moment’ when I snapped the still forms against the backdrop of such chaos but it wasn’t until later when I returned to the rink to file my photos that my editor pointed out that the two people were not hurt, but kissing.” “Everyone has been asking who they are,” said Lam but he has no idea and never had the opportunity to speak to them. Even now he’s not sure whether the picture shows a couple kissing or whether one of the two people is hurt. “I keep looking at the picture but I don’t know what I think anymore,” he said. Officials in Vancouver said almost 150 people required hospital treatment and almost 100 were arrested during the riot. A spokeswoman for the local health authority said three stabbing victims had been admitted and an one man was in critical condition with head injuries after a fall from a viaduct. Rioting and looting left cars burned, stores in shambles and windows shattered over a roughly 10-block radius of the city’s main shopping district. Police Chief Jim Chu said nine officers were injured, including one who required 14 stitches after being hit with a thrown brick. Chu said some officers suffered bite marks. He said 15 cars were burned, including two police cars. He called those who incited the riot “criminals and anarchists” and said officers identified some in the crowd as the same people who smashed windows and caused trouble through the same streets the day after the 2010 Winter Olympics opened in 2010. “These were people who came equipped with masks, goggles and gasoline,” he said. “They had a plan.” Chu said those who stood by and filmed and cheered also bear some responsibility. Assistant Fire Chief Wade Pierlot said people had to be rescued from rooftops and bathrooms where they had hidden for safety. He said some people moved burning dumpsters away from buildings to prevent further damage. Canada Photography Dominic Rushe guardian.co.uk
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Australian study of injection to protect against HPV virus reveals drop in high-grade abnormalities among under-18s The first evidence has emerged that nationwide vaccination programmes for young women against HPV, the virus that triggers cervical cancer, are likely to cut the numbers who get the disease. A study in Australia, one of the first countries to introduce the vaccination, has shown a drop in high-grade cervical abnormalities – changes to the cells in the neck of the womb that can be the precursor to cancer. Australia introduced nationwide HPV (human papilloma virus) vaccination for women aged 12 to 26 from 2007. While it will take many years to find out whether vaccination programmes definitely reduce the numbers of cervical cancers in the population, Australian scientists were able to analyse the results from their screening programme to find out whether there has been any drop in the number of young women with abnormal cell changes that are the precursor of cancer. Publishing in the Lancet medical journal, they report that the proportion of girls aged 17 and younger with high-grade abnormalities fell by 0.38% – almost halving the numbers, from 0.80% to 0.42%. But there was no drop in the numbers of women with cervical abnormalities who were older than 17. This is unsurprising since the vaccine is known to be most effective if given to girls before they become sexually active. That finding, say the authors, “reinforces the appropriateness of the targeting of prophylactic HPV vaccines to pre-adolescent girls”. The findings were greeted with international interest. “The not-so-cautious optimist in us wants to hail this early finding as true evidence of vaccine effect,” write Dr Mona Saraiya and Dr Susan Hariri of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, US, in a linked commentary for the journal. But they said they wanted to know more about the vaccine status of the individuals (each woman is supposed to have three shots) and wanted more work to establish whether the reductions in potential cancers were really a result of vaccination or some other cause. Michael Quinn, professor of gynaecology and gynaecologic oncology at the University of Melbourne, said: “The study is the first anywhere in the world to show falling rates of high-grade change in very young women. “Although this is likely to be due to the effects of the vaccination programme, further analysis of information linking women’s smear history to their vaccination history will be needed to prove that the fall is entirely due to vaccination rather than other factors.” Public health experts say that women should not assume they are not vulnerable to the disease after vaccination and should still go for regular screening checks. The UK introduced its own cervical cancer vaccination programme in September 2008, offering the jab in school to 12- and 13-year-old girls, with catch-up programmes for those up to 18. The cost was expected to be £100m a year. Of the two available vaccines, the UK decided to buy Cervarix, manufactured by the British company GlaxoSmithKline, even though it does not offer the additional protection against genital warts of the alternative, Gardasil. In spite of worries that parents would refuse to have their daughters vaccinated against what is essentially a sexually-transmitted virus, the take-up has been good, according to figures from the Department of Health. In the school year 2009/10, more than three-quarters of 12- to 13-year-olds were given all three doses of the vaccine. Vaccines and immunisation Cervical cancer Health & wellbeing Cancer Health Australia Immunology Medical research Sarah Boseley guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The Rachel Maddow Show, from September 2009 The GAO just released their finding that there was no reason for the congressional abolition of ACORN. Better late than never, I suppose. Thanks to the Democratic leadership for sticking it to an ally because they were so afraid of the manufactured controversy: A report issued today by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) finds little to support the charges that led to the demise of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a grassroots consumer advocacy organization driven out of existence by Congressional critics. The GAO found that monitoring of awards to ACORN by government agencies generally consisted of reviewing progress reports and making site visits. Of 22 investigations of alleged election and voter registration fraud, most were closed without prosecution, the report found. One of eight investigations of alleged voter registration fraud resulted in guilty pleas and seven were closed without action due to lack of evidence. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) reported five closed matters – one resolved, one dismissed and the others dropped after FEC “found no reason to believe the violations occurred.” In 2009, conservative activists released selectively edited videos claiming to show ACORN employees giving advice on hiding prostitution activities and avoiding taxes. The videos created a nationwide controversy that resulting in Congress passing laws that prohibited federal funds from being awarded to ACORN. The group disbanded in March 2010 In December 2009, New York U.S. District Court Judge Nina Gershon ruled that Congress had violated the Constitution by singling out ACORN and banning it from receiving federal funds but the ruling was overturned by a federal appeals court, which found that federal funds amounted to only 10 percent of ACORN’s funding and therefore Congress’ action did not amount to punishment, even though it may have been unjustified. The GAO report identified about $48 million in federal grants and contracts that had been awarded to ACORN and its affiliates from 2005 to 2009.
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From listening to CNN's pre- and post-Weiner press conference commentary, one could be forgiven for thinking they were already attempting to jumpstart the congressman's political career. Already one former politician caught in a sex scandal is using his prime-time position at CNN to rehabilitate his image. “Sad” and “tragic” were words used by CNN's political team to describe Weiner's resignation given that he was a “rising star” in the Democrat Party. CNN's Wolf Blitzer told colleague John King, “It's almost tragic, John, because as you've been pointing out, [Weiner] was really the front-runner to become the next mayor of New York City after Michael Bloomberg.” [Video below the break.] Before and after the press conference, the CNN hosts and correspondents repeatedly threw around the possibility of a political comeback for Weiner. Wolf Blitzer claimed that “just reading the body language, hearing what he had to say, I would by no means rule out at some point down the road, maybe a year from now, five years from now, Anthony Weiner, it's in his blood, he might seek political office once again.” He remarked earlier that “New Yorkers are very forgiving.” Blitzer posed the question to CNN's legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, who was surprisingly more even-keeled in his assessment of a comeback. “Well, I think like most politicians, he was keeping his options open,” he said of Weiner, before adding that “you know, I think that is really off in the future, if at all.” Dana Bash hyped that “everybody in this country loves a comeback story” as she agreed with Blitzer. Anchor John King called the possible comeback an “open question,” but did seem to agree with Blitzer's opinion of New Yorkers as “forgiving.” “They are scrappy people. They like somebody who stands up and fights for themselves and fights for the district and fights for the city,” he said. The next hour, anchor Brooke Baldwin continued the narrative in her one question of New York Democrat congressman Steve Israel. “Look, New Yorkers are a forgiving bunch. And he has represented this district in New York for seven terms. Do you think there is any kind of possibility down the road that he could return to Capitol Hill?” Ironically, the Democratic congressman played down the idea. “Well, I can tell you absolutely firsthand that the only kind of recovery that Anthony Weiner is concerned about, based on the conversations that I have had with him is not a political recovery. It is his personal recovery,” he told Baldwin. “So I don't believe that politics is anywhere near the – in the equation right now for Congressman Weiner.” A partial transcript of the commentary, which aired on June 16 at 2:06 p.m. EDT, is as follows: [2:06] WOLF BLITZER: Yes, I wouldn't rule out a second chance. Dana, I don't know what you're hearing up about there about any political ambitions he might have. Right now, he's got a lot of other serious issues he's got to deal with, with his family, his friends, his constituency, and himself — he says he's been in treatment. He's trying to fix the problems obviously, that he's had. But what almost $5 million in campaign cash that if he wants to someday will be available and he will continue. He will obviously get that congressional pension, assuming he announces his resignation in the next few minutes. DANA BASH, CNN Capitol Hill correspondent: That's right. And, you know, everybody in this country loves a comeback story. So – and his colleagues are also saying, Wolf, even as we speak, they are telling our colleagues, like Deirdre Walsh, right off the House floor, don't count him out in the future. Right now, he's got to take time. He's got to go get himself help. He's got to go deal with his family, with his wife and everything else. But they're saying, you know, don't rule him out. (…) [2:14] BLITZER: This is a very, very dramatic moment indeed. It's almost tragic, John, because as you've been pointing out, he was really the front-runner to become the next mayor of New York City after Michael Bloomberg. JOHN KING: And you look at the scene, Wolf, there are 435 members of the House of Representatives, none of them can draw a media crowd like this unless – unless –
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enlarge Awwww, how utterly populist of Mitt Romney. During a Florida event he “felt the pain” of the unemployed by sharing his shameful secret: he’s also unemployed . Of course, with $200 million in the bank and a few houses around the country, maybe he’s not quite as desperate as some of them, but nevertheless, he’s their guy because he shares their pain. TAMPA, Fla. — Mitt Romney sat at the head of the table at a coffee shop here on Thursday, listening to a group of unemployed Floridians explain the challenges of looking for work. When they finished, he weighed in with a predicament of his own. “I should tell my story,” Mr. Romney said. “I’m also unemployed.” He chuckled. The eight people gathered around him, who had just finished talking about strategies of finding employment in a slow-to-recover economy, joined him in laughter. “Are you on LinkedIn?” one of the men asked. “I’m networking,” Mr. Romney replied. “I have my sight on a particular job.” Steve Benen reminds everyone of how Romney made his millions : But when an extremely wealthy person jokes to people who are actually struggling about being “unemployed,” it rankles. Indeed, Mitt Romney became extremely wealthy in a way that seems relevant to this discussion. “You see, Romney made a Mittload of cash using what’s known as a leveraged buyout. He’d buy a company with ‘money borrowed against their assets, groomed them to be sold off and in the interim collect huge management fees.’ Once Mitt had control of the company, he’d cut frivolous spending like jobs, workers, employees, and jobs. […] “Because Mitt Romney knows just how to trim the fat. He rescued businesses like Dade Behring, Stage Stories, American Pad and Paper, and GS Industries, then his company sold them for a profit of $578 million after which all of those firms declared bankruptcy. Which sounds bad, but don’t worry, almost no one worked there anymore. “Besides, a businessman can’t be weighed down with a bleeding heart. As one former Bain employee put it, ‘It was very clinical…. Like a doctor. When the patient is dead, you just move on to the next patient.’” Really, joking about being unemployed sort of grates a bit given how many jobs Romney has killed over the years. As Ezra Klein points out , it’s not his jokes so much as his economic analysis and values that are the problem. And Romney just showed just how out of touch his values are with the rest of America.
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Speaker orders minister to explain reports of errors which led to some councils being overfunded by £300 per pupil The ambitious plan by the education secretary, Michael Gove, to announce a fresh wave of academy schools was temporarily derailed when his junior minister Nick Gibb was forced into the Commons to answer charges that his department had misallocated funds for academies. Gove travelled to Birmingham to speak at the annual conference of the National College for School Leadership, where he announced plans for 200 more sponsored secondary academies in poorer areas, and the establishment of 200 academies in under-performing English primary schools. The reforms were broadly welcomed by Labour. Gove now expects one-third of schools to be academies by the end of the year, freeing them to set curriculums and arrange budgets, staff pay and working hours. Little extra cash is attached to academy status. Citing Barack Obama, Gove said: “Education reform is the civil rights battle of our time. In Britain, as in the USA, access to a quality education has never mattered more, but access to a quality education is rationed for the poor, the vulnerable and those from minority communities.” But his initiative was, for part of the day, overshadowed by the Commons Speaker, John Bercow, ordering the junior education minister to the Commons to explain reports that many existing academies had been given excessive funding by the department. The Financial Times said errors in funding had led to some councils being over-funded by as much as an extra £300 per pupil, worth around £300,000 a year to the average secondary academy. The department admitted there had been errors submitted by councils, but said the culprit was an over-complex funding system that led to councils making errors in funding applications. That system was being urgently reformed, the department said. Gibb said that the system over which the Labour government had presided meant that “schools in some local authorities received some £4,000 more per pupil than other schools with the same problems”. The shadow education secretary, Andy Burnham, said at the weekend that Gove had “caved in” to a legal claim by 23 councils that too much money had been taken from their budgets to pay for academies. Burnham told MPs: “We hear he [Gove] will pay the councils’ legal costs. “In the past year, the secretary of state has spent more money on solicitors’ fees than Ryan Giggs and Fred Goodwin put together.” Away from Westminster, Gove pressed ahead with plans to speed up the academy programme. As the Guardian has reported, Gove announced he will open more sponsored academies this year than the last government did in the first eight years of the programme and more than in any year of the history of the academy programme. Eighty-eight schools have been identified and will open in the next academic year. The weakest 200 primary schools in the country will become academies in 2012-13. Local authorities with particularly large numbers of struggling primaries will be identified for urgent collaboration with the department to tackle a further 500 primaries. The current average results performance will become the new “floor” for secondaries – all schools should have at least 50% of pupils getting five good GCSEs including English and maths by 2015. Gove told the Birmingham conference: “If we are to aspire to a world-class education system then we need to raise our sights beyond 35%. So next year the floor will rise to 40% and my aspiration is that by 2015 we will be able to raise it to 50%. There is no reason – if we work together – that by the end of this parliament every young person in the country can’t be educated in a school where at least half of students reach this basic academic standard.” He went on: “I realise that in stating this aspiration some will criticise too strong a focus on testing”. But he argued “A GCSE floor standard is about providing a basic minimum expectation to young people that their school will equip them for further education and employment.” Critics claimed that changing the formal status of a school did not necessarily improve the quality of teaching. Martin Johnson, deputy general secretary at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: “Once again the Department for Education has been found wanting. Quite how the education secretary thinks his department will be able to cope with running hundreds more academies when it has managed to mess up the funding for 704 is unclear.” Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: “It is with breathtaking ignorance that Michael Gove believes compelling primary schools to convert to academies status will improve standards. The evidence does not support this. “This is a totally unacceptable experiment to undertake with our primary school children. These plans are being sold as the government’s vision of state funded education but are transparently not state education as there will be no democratic accountability.” Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT, said: “Unfortunately this is just more of the same from the secretary of state: obsessively focusing on academies, invidiously name-checking the favoured few, substituting anecdote for evidence, misleading the public and misrepresenting the impact of his reforms. “Schools are being bullied, bounced and bribed into becoming academies.” The cash conundrum The government has admitted that the way in which it funds all schools – including academies – is “opaque, full of anomalies and unfair”. However for many education officials the resources given to academies are particularly unjust. Academies are funded by central government while maintained schools are given funds by their local authorities (LAs). In theory, academies receive the same amount per pupil as local authority maintained schools. But they are also given the additional money their town hall would have spent on related services such as transport and special needs provision. Academies also receive about £25,000 from the government to cover the costs of setting up a charitable trust and negotiating complex land transfers. In addition, academies that replace failing schools are given an extra sum of up to £400,000 to cover changes in leadership and new teachers. It is not these extra sums that critics see as unfair. They take issue with how the government deducts the money from LAs’ funds. Schools are turning into academies all year round. So how does the government know the amount by which it should reduce LAs’ funds for the whole year? The solution the government came up with last September was to cut LA funds by at least £148m in expectation that many schools would turn into academies and be out of LA hands. The LAs, were furious. They said ministers had calculated the cut by adding up how much it cost individual academies to provide services, not how much LAs actually spent on the schools that have now become academies. One council – Portsmouth – claims it is losing £500,000 through the cut and that its one academy is receiving double the amount per pupil of its other schools. Some 23 LAs have lodged claims with the high court for judicial review to have the calculation changed. Now another problem has emerged. It appears that too much money has been given to some academies and too little to others. The Department for Education says this is because LAs report their spending in different ways and may have made errors. Perhaps this is why the government is now carrying out not one but two consultations on how schools should be funded. Jessica Shepherd Academies Schools Primary schools Secondary schools Teaching Michael Gove Education policy Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk
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Thanks to Brian Beutler at TPM for mashing this together so quickly. It’s so telling. Watch the video mashup of the three major cable news channel and how they all quickly lost interest in Senate Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s press conference when she made it clear she would not answer questions about the imminent resignation of Rep. Anthony Weiner. Now look at this graph: enlarge Credit: Source: Gallup Do you see Anthony Weiner’s weiner on that list? Of course you don’t. Even his constituents for the most part don’t think it’s an overriding concern . That distraction for which Weiner gamely took responsibility should more rightly be placed squarely on the shoulders of the media, who have relentlessly pursued him and cornered his colleagues in the Democratic Party to find out when (not whether) Weiner would resign. What was Nancy Pelosi discussing that the media en masse decided wasn’t nearly as interesting as Anthony Weiner? Jobs. Funny, that. Just as the media doesn’t care about what the democratic process and what Weiner’s constituents want, the media doesn’t care that most Americans don’t care about Anthony Weiner at all and want to know that Congress is focusing on the concerns they do have. This is what the media didn’t care if Americans heard : It is day 163, 163 days since the Republicans have taken over the majority of the House of Representatives—almost 6 months, and still no jobs bill on the floor. Instead, the Republicans have put forth a budget that ends Medicare, while making seniors pay more to get less or give tax subsidies to Big Oil. They are harming seniors by changing Medicaid, while they give tax breaks to businesses that send jobs overseas. They are reducing our investment in education and making it worse for our children and making it more expensive for nearly 10 million young people to go to college, making it prohibitively expensive for them, while they give tax cuts to the wealthiest people in our country. We want to put people back to work. We want to do so as we put our fiscal house in order. We will not do it on the backs of our children, our seniors, or the great middle class. Democrats are focused on creating jobs, strengthening the middle class, preserving Social Security, and responsibly reducing the debt. We have introduced—you have been here with our Whip, Steny Hoyer with a Make It in America agenda. It is an agenda about stopping the erosion of our industrial manufacturing and technological base. It is an agenda about, again, making it in America by building the infrastructure of our country with Build America Bonds and the rest. We have had this presentation over and over again. We have not been able to get one of these bills brought to the floor under the leadership of the Republican majority, and so we are going another route. We are taking one element of the Make It in America agenda that is a component that addresses the manipulation of currency by the Chinese government. This is unfair to American workers. It is costing us over 1 million jobs. Hm….can’t imagine why the media didn’t think this was newsworthy, can you?
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Mike Stock, of the 1980s Stock Aitken Waterman team, urges broadcasters to toughen up standards on explicit content Mike Stock, the co-writer of a generation of wholesome hits such as Kylie Minogue’s I Should Be So Lucky, has hit out against the “relentless torrent of sex-driven imagery” that young people are exposed to in music videos and on TV. Stock, part of the Stock, Aitken Waterman hit songwriting team of the 1980s and 1990s, has criticised the fashion for raunchy videos by stars such as Rihanna and Christina Aguilera – whose overtly sexual performances on last year’s X Factor attracted thousands of complaints. “Pop music in this country is almost completely dominated by American acts who have taken sexualised imagery, dance moves and lyrical content way beyond the limits of decency,” Stock said in an open letter calling for broadcasters to toughen up their explicit content standards. Stock added: “As far as music is concerned it has been a slow but unmistakable descent into pornography.” He singled out material such as Nicole Scherzinger’s “overtly sexual” performance on Britain’s Got Talent this year and called on the BBC and ITV to take the lead in cracking down on raunchy content. Stock’s letter comes on the heels of the publication of the Bailey report into the commercialisation and sexualisation of young people by the media. The report called for the introduction of cinema-style classifications and tightening the 9pm watershed, so that performances such as those seen on the X Factor are not repeated. “I have concerns that the report has let the broadcasters off the hook. All broadcasters need to take responsibility for their own output,” he said. “Eventually, even sites like YouTube will need to face up to their obligations.” Stock argued that the watershed is “irrelevant” in the digital age, with services such as the BBC iPlayer allowing children to access any TV content they wish. He added that “you can’t sticker a download” with explicit warnings, as happens with CDs and DVDs. Stock believes the TV industry regulator, Ofcom, is “little more than a passive observer”, that can only react after material has aired. “But what’s the point after the horse has bolted?” He also laments the disappearance of pop chart shows such as Top of the Pops, which he believes had higher standards. “There’s no broadcast opportunity for pop,” he said. “Bring back pop music for young people, expose it on television and drive all this sexually explicit trash back to the stone age where it belongs. Let’s all get behind a weekly chart of the bestselling pop records. The promotion of which is something that the BBC and ITV should take the lead on. Everyone else will soon follow.” Television industry Ofcom Pop and rock Mark Sweney guardian.co.uk
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Ed Balls issues warning that UK recovery has stalled as gloomy retail figures are released Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, has called for an emergency temporary cut in VAT to “jump-start” Britain’s “flatlining” economy that is performing at a slower rate than its major competitors. As new figures showed retail sales fell by twice the expected rate in May, by 1.4%, Balls accused the chancellor, George Osborne, of endangering the economy by embarking on a “rash and headlong lunge” at rapid deficit reduction. The shadow chancellor said there was still time to slow the pace of deficit reduction by reversing, on a temporary basis, the 2.5% increase in VAT introduced in January by Osborne. Increasing VAT from 17.5% to 20% was one of the main early measures of the chancellor’s plan to eliminate the structural deficit by 2015. In a speech at the London School of Economics, Balls called for a rethink. He said: “My suggestion to George Osborne is that, while he will not agree to reverse his mistaken VAT rise permanently, he should now reverse it temporarily until the economy is growing strongly again … Slowing down the pace of deficit reduction with a temporary VAT cut now would give the flatlining economy the jump-start it so urgently needs, boost jobs and be a better way to get the deficit down for the long term.” The intervention by Balls, which came as the gloomy retail figures were released, was quickly rejected by the government, which said that reversing the VAT increase would cost £12bn a year. At a question and answer session in Lincoln, David Cameron responded to those calling for tax cuts and more government spending and investment. “All you would be doing, if you did that, is making the problem of your deficit, of your overdraft, worse,” he said. Balls, in his first setpiece lecture since his appointment as shadow chancellor in January, was seeking to reframe the debate on deficit reduction. He accused Osborne of refusing to countenance an alternative so he could: • Blame Labour for failing to face up to tough decisions if the coalition plan worked. Balls said the plan to eradicate the structural deficit in this parliament “was primarily about electoral politics – rapid tax rises and spending cuts chiefly designed to fit a political timetable that gets the pain over early [and] makes Labour take the blame”. • Claim Labour would not have made any difference if the plan failed. Balls signed up to Alistair Darling’s plans to halve the deficit over four years when he was appointed shadow chancellor in January. The Treasury said the Darling plan would have led a re-elected Labour government to deliver about 85% of the cuts introduced by the coalition. Labour, according to the Treasury, would have cut £7 in every £8 proposed by the coalition, leading to £14bn in cuts this year compared with £16bn by the coalition. Balls remains committed to the Darling plan, although he believes it will become increasingly irrelevant. For the moment, he is challenging the chancellor to adopt the VAT cut as a middle course between the Darling and coalition plans to provide a stimulus. Balls said a failure to acknowledge that the recovery had stalled, after a reasonable performance in the first half of 2010, risked inflicting permanent damage on the economy. He said the “scale of the fiscal hit to demand and growth in Britain this year is unprecedented”, adding that, a year ago, the Office for Budget Responsibility “forecast growth of 2.6% in 2011 – they now predict just 1.7%”. He said: “Months – or years – of slow growth aren’t something that will be quickly repaired. It risks leaving a permanent dent in our nation’s prosperity – relative to how prosperous we might have been and how prosperous we are relative to other countries. Because economic history also teaches us that economies don’t simply bounce back to where they would have been.” Balls offered no apology for Labour’s spending either ahead of or during the banking crisis to prevent recession tipping into depression. He admitted he was still relatively isolated in his view that the markets would tolerate a less aggressive approach to the deficit and said it was too early to say whether his judgment, or that of Osborne, would be proved right. The shadow chancellor said the economic evidence so far was pointing in his direction, arguing: “Looking at growth across the EU over the last six months compared to the previous six months, we have gone from the top end of the economic growth league table to fourth from bottom, with only Denmark, Greece and Portugal below us. “Unemployment forecasts for the next four years have all been revised upwards. Inflation forecasts for the end of 2011 have risen sharply from 1.6% to 4.2% with a further increase next year, and the result of this slower growth, higher unemployment and higher inflation is that the government will have to borrow a further £46bn more than forecast after the spending review.” Balls expressed astonishment that Osborne had not thought more carefully about the “fork in the road” when he came to office last May: “He did not hesitate in making a rash and headlong lunge down the path of rapid deficit reduction.” The shadow chancellor was scathing about Osborne’s claims last year, as he hardened his deficit reduction plans, that Britain was facing a Greek-style sovereign debt crisis. Balls said: “That must have been the first time in history that a British chancellor has looked not to America, France or Germany, but to Greece, Portugal or Ireland for economic insights … We have the longest-term bonds of any country, which means we need to raise much less each year and are not so subject to short-term moods in the markets.” Nick Clegg, who campaigned during the general election against the “bombshell” of raising VAT, dismissed the speech. The deputy prime minister said: “The Labour party is now perilously close to terminally and permanently losing the confidence of the British people on the economy. “There appeared still to be no recognition whatsoever of the responsibilities of government when Labour was in power for 13 years, no recognition of the extent of the economic rebalancing exercise needed to get the country back on a sustainable footing, endless reference to a Plan B which to me means ‘bankrupt’ – intellectually bankrupt, fiscally bankrupt and politically bankrupt.” Treasury sources said: “This speech marks a step back for Labour and for Ed Balls. Rather than owning up to mistakes in the past and showing that he understood what went wrong, he said he is sticking to his strategy. “If he had delivered the speech David Miliband was intending to deliver as Labour leader, and acknowledge the scale of the deficit under Labour, then that would have shown the party is getting its act together.” Economic policy Economics Ed Balls George Osborne Nicholas Watt Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk
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